Missile
Missiles come in varying masses, depending on the ship class that fires it, with larger vessels capable of firing missiles that have slightly more acceleration and heavier warheads. Missiles may be tipped with various heads, including contact fusion warheads, bomb-pumped laser warheads, sidewall penetrators, and ECM to help missile breach defenses. Some smaller missiles may even be purely kinetic. Anti-missile defenses include rolling a ship's wedge, electronic countermeasures, countermissiles, and point defense. Missile Types The most common weapons are impeller drive missiles. Missiles come in varying masses, depending on the ship class that fires it, with larger vessels capable of firing missiles that have slightly more acceleration and heavier warheads. A typical capital-ship missile masses 80 tons and can accelerate at 46,000 G for 180 seconds before its drive burns out, giving a powered flight range of over six million kilometers. Naturally, in space, it is possible to reach a target beyond powered range, but it is very easy to avoid a coasting missile. Missile drives are frequently adjustable, allowing the acceleration to be "stepped down" in order to increase the powered envelope, although at a cost of giving the opposing force more time to throw up defenses. Even within powered range, electronic countermeasures, evasive systems, point defense and countermissiles are effective, and a direct hit on a defended ship is nearly unheard of. Missiles spin while in flight, to make it difficult for point defense lasers to get a clear shot past the impeller wedge. Nuclear Warhead Centuries ago, in the time of Edward Saganami, missiles used fusion warheads in the megaton range. Such weapons had to get very close to the target to do damage, and were practically made obsolete by improvements in point defense. Laser Warhead The nuclear warhead was superseded as a ship-killer by the laser head. This weapon used the high energy electromagnetic radiation produced during a nuclear explosion to pump about twenty-five X-ray lasers. As the initial radiation entered the gain medium, the gamma rays were amplified and fired, after which the gain medium would have been destroyed by the explosions aftereffects, resulting in a brief flare of multiple high-energy gamma-ray laser beams. Unlike a pure fusion warhead, meaningful damage could be dealt to anything within 25,000 kilometers of the detonation. It was more effective at penetrating sidewalls than a pure fusion explosive. (In the real world, this exact weapon–but with poorer performance–was designed by Edward Teller; he called it 'Project Excalibur'.) Nowadays, starships carry mostly laser heads, some nuclear warheads (Such as the Navy of Masada), and some electronic warfare missiles. Multi-Drive Missile Advances in warship technology during the First Haven-Manticore War include the development of the MDM (multi-drive missile). First built by Manticore's researchers (see Ghostrider Project), these missiles used the ancient concept of staging. Manticoran designs included three separate drives. Drives could be configured independantly, to either fire sequentially, or incorporate "coasting" between stages, to increase their maximum powered envelope. Due to their size they could no be carried by smaller starships, but this was a minor limitation. When they were first introduced, they made the Royal Manticoran Navy nearly invincible and contributed greatly to their victory in the First Haven-Manticore War. During the five-year armistice, the Havenites copied the weapon. By the commencement of the Second Haven-Manticore War, the Imperial Andermani Navy had developed two-stage MDMs, and were being refit to accommodate the Manticoran three-stage missiles. Specs * SKM Mark 16 two-stage ** maximum powered missile envelope: 29 million km * SKM three-stage ** drives firing immediately in sequence at maximum acceleration *** 180s of powered flight *** maximum powered missile envelope: 14.5 million km *** terminal velocity: 0.54c ** accel decreased to 46,000 G *** envelope: 65 million km (3.6 light-minutes) *** terminal velocity: 0.81c Viper The Viper was a Grayson-designed anti-LAC missile, based on the Mark 31 countermissile. It was developed for use with the newer ''Katana''-class space superiority LACs, and was two-thirds the size of a normal LAC-launched missile. Because it was designed to target LACs, the Viper adopted a much smaller warhead, but added much better seekers and an enhanced AI, allowing it to become a "fire and forget" weapon. It incorporated the Mark 31's drive system, which allowed it both to have high acceleration and maneuverability, and to also, if needed, be used in the role of countermissile. * 130,000 G accel * powered envelope (from rest) of 3.6 million km * 75 second flight time * could double as countermissile The Viper could also be fired from standard countermissile tubes on larger warships as part of anti-LAC defenses. (HH11) Mistletoe The Mistletoe was an offensive reconnaissance drone designed for the Royal Manticoran Navy (RMN) by Sonja Hemphill. Mounting a standard missile warhead on a recon drone, Mistletoe was designed as a "hunter-killer" weapon to stealthily seek and then destroy critical defence system architecture such as the Republic of Haven's Moriarty platforms. First deployed during Operation Sanskrit. (HH11) Missile Tube Missile tubes have also improved. Now, they have much wider fields of fire. Some vessels, such as the Edward Saganami-C class, mount no fore or aft missile tubes, as the broadside launchers can cover the entire horizontal plane. Missile Pod Before this development, missile pods existed in the form of clusters of single-shot launchers designed to be towed by tractor beam. When mass-driver launch tubes were developed, they could not be fitted to pods. Pod-launched missiles were therefore slow and obsolete. At the beginning of the First Havenite War, the Royal Manticoran Navy developed a miniaturized mass driver that could be fitted in a pod. Immediately, pods became crucial to warfare again, as a ship could tow pods containing far more tubes than its broadside. As pods could not be reloaded under combat conditions, this made the first salvos of a battle the decisive ones. Towing pods does reduce the acceleration of a vessel if it cannot be towed inside the wedge of its control ship. The dynamic of war changed again with the design of the 'pod-layer' ships. These vessels sacrificed aft chase armament, considerable magazine space, and some structural integrity to store enormous racks of expendable missile pods. With each broadside, a new set of pods could be dropped, fired, and discarded. Now, starships could carry sufficient missile firepower to destroy considerably superior enemy vessels. (Energy firepower had always been similarly excessive.) Pod-layer designs are predominant among new-build superdreadnoughts, and the first pod battlecruisers have entered service. Apollo System Another advance over standard pod-layers was the Apollo system, deployed by Manticore and initially only in very limited numbers. In this system, the salvo from a single pod contained two types of missiles. Eight of the missiles were standard MDMs with a variety of warheads and ECM. The second type was a single larger missile fitted with an FTL telemetry link instead of a warhead; this missile acted as a control node for the other eight missiles in the pod and allowed a Keyhole II equipped ship to provide effectively real-time control to the missiles across their range envelope. There was also a system-defense version of Apollo. (HH11) Category:Technology Category:Space Weapons Technology